Forgetting Things: Senior Moments or Absence of Mind?

by Joan Friedlander

If you're talking about one thing and thinking about, reading or doing another, what are the chances you're fully present to what you're saying in the moment?

Though you might be quick to attribute short-term memory loss to age (assuming you're over 40), I now believe that is not always the answer. I've been observing myself these past few weeks and I now suspect that I've simply got too many things vying for my attention at the same time. I know I'm not alone in this. The number one result people want from me when they begin coaching is a greater ability to have clarity about their priorities and to be able to focus for longer periods of time on their most important business activities in order to achieve their goals.

They say women can multitask and men can't. I'm not sure any of us really can and be fully present to what's happening in the moment. John Kehoe, author of Mind Power, says that the conscious mind can only think one thing at a time. If what he says is true, is it any wonder we are experiencing a reduced capacity to focus as our lives get busier and busier?

In Stephen Covey's newest book, The 8th Habit, he talks about something I've written about before; the significance of the impact of our transition from the Industrial Age to the Information Age. It's a transition of humongous proportions as it entails a worldwide paradigm shift that affects productivity. I'm now wondering if this transition contains an important hint for us regarding busyness and the impact on our memory. I wonder if our busyness is somehow a result of unhealthy habits we've developed in response to lightening-speed computers, the Internet, e-mail and cell phone usage.

Covey says that in the Industrial model people were treated more like the productive machines we use than like a whole person we are. Significant value was placed on our productivity. The more we got done in as little time as possible, the more we were valued. The Information/Knowledge Age demands a shift to a new paradigm and the old model is being downsized because it no longer works. Our problem, I think, is that we don't yet know this and are working hard to keep up at a humanly impossible speed. I also suspect that because we are part of the evolution, we are here to invent new solutions and only conscious awareness will enable us to do so.

We've developed amazing technology that goes faster and faster and rather than leveraging it, we seem to be trying to keep up with it as if we are just another machine. Let's look back 20 years: I remember when 256K was fast! I don't even know how many megahertz our computers run at now (my husband says a few gigabytes), but it's a bazillion times faster than 256K and I wonder if we are expecting the same increased speed from our bodies and minds.

If you notice you are forgetting more and more, having difficulty focusing and staying present and, therefore, struggling to reach your goals, what can you do to adjust and leverage technology rather than working harder and harder to keep up? What are you willing to do?

Knowing what is distracting you will help you decide what to do about it. Check out these possibilities and add your own:

• Do you have nagging worries that interfere with present thought - and sleep?
• Do you keep email running in the background while you're working on a project or talking on the phone?
• Do you know you have taken on more than you can handle?
• Do you cram too much into your schedule and neglect to build in enough "white space" to allow for realistic travel time or unexpected contingencies?
• Do you know your limits and do you use your priorities to make decisions about how you will spend your time?
• Do you plow through and push things to go your way, or do you yield to the apparent obstacles that show up without your permission?
• Do you see setbacks as gifts, or as annoyances that are to be overcome by the determination of your will

If you said yes to any of the bullet points above, perhaps your memory issues are not age-related, but a result of too much on your plate.

P.S. It's now 2008 and I've just re-read this article. I'm not the same remember-everything person I was. I know I have more on my plate, that that my schedule is a better keeper of my appointments, and my checklist of the people in my classes. I think it's a little of both - senior moments and absence of mind...

 

by Joan Friedlander, © 2004. All rights reserved.